Talk:Earthforce troop transport
Name As with the Valkyrie, if there's no canon source for the name this should be moved to something like "Earthforce troop transport". Blind Wolf 16:18, March 23, 2010 (UTC) :I can't find anything that seems legitimate... Radagast83 07:01, March 24, 2010 (UTC) ‘Boomer’ was a name pulled out of thin air, as are quite a few on the B5scrolls site. Cougar and Muskrat being two others used for Earthforce vessels. If you can get access to them, then the supplementary material created by Mongoose and Chameleon are the best bets for canon (or at least ‘official’) names. But the upshot is many of these more minor designs have been overlooked. :The RPGs are non-canon so anything from there, including names, would have to go in an "apocrypha" sub-section as they have no bearing on anything else.Blind Wolf 19:06, April 26, 2010 (UTC) Always found that to be a bit of a grey area. Read plenty of folks pulling things apart and generally arguing for the RPG and desktop games to be seen as either canon or not. Read some jms replies on the matter. Which implies they are (generally), or some of it is . . . .or not, but leaves wriggle room as he puts it. http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-2701 http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-514 Personally it’s too grey an area, and something I deliberately stayed away from when putting the B5Scrolls site together. If you read the Mat Sprange interview on there you’ll see that he was told (after a little spat) that mongooses material is now to be viewed as ‘official but not canon’. . . . . . . . . . . !! http://themadgoner.com/B5/B5Scrolls/B5Scrolls.htm#Screen4_09_5 It’s like a few things surrounding certain aspects of the show – you pays your money and takes your choice. By the way I like what you guys are doing with this wiki – especially with keeping the fanon down to an absolute minimum – can’t be easy. : ) Not seen them myself but I’ve been told the Official B5 Magazines contain a lot of good information (interviews, article & concepts) that doesn’t appear anywhere else. :Yeah we had a bit of a discussion on what was and was not canon in regards to RPGs some months back. In the end, given JMS's dis-ownership and to be frank, the rather poor quality (however well meaning) of most of the material I've seen, the simplest thing was to relegate most of it to "apocrypha" subsections and make sure there's an appropriate caveat, especially as a lot of it just contradicts sources like the Official Guide CDROM which is defiantly canon. It's hardly an unprecedented situation as most of the original run of novels were dropped from canon and with good reason. :You're right though, it's not easy keeping the fanon stuff under control and it took months to purge as much of it as I could find (still probably a few traces here and there.) I still have to use the undo button every once in a while, some people can't take the hint. ;-) :I've only recently gotten my hands on the old mags, so I'm still slowly working my way though them, finding anything pertinent, but yeah, there's some good stuff there. :Great work on B5Scrolls btw, as I'm sure you've noticed we've been stealing rather shamelessly from those interviews. Blind Wolf 00:39, April 28, 2010 (UTC) (I hear what you saying about not taking a hint). But I can understand how much of the fanon stuff (and a few myths) came about – a lot of interest by fans and detailed supplementary material created for the show being a bit thin on the ground, or hard to get hold of. B5Tech (which I do believe is a great place when viewed as a fan site) fills a few of the gaps, but does kind of cherry pick details from various sources and adds them to best guesses and pet theories to create an entertaining source. But the lack of caveats (and how widely the sites been quoted, for years) has blurred the lines of canon & fanon for some folks. I think your going the right way (for a reference site) by not doing that ‘cherry picking’ of details because if you feel one factoid is valid you cut yourself off at the knees when arguing another point from the same source is wrong. Limits what you can add as content I guess, but that can’t be helped if your going for factual. As for lifting stuff from B5Scrolls. Hell yeah, that’s what it’s there for. I know the likes of Brandon (again, over at B5Tech) has issues with folks lifting stuff from the site. But I can’t quite get my head round the idea of why it’s a problem. If you don’t want the information referenced and repeated then why put it on the bloody internet. : ) I’m just pleased that some folks find some of the content of interest (the site did grow into something I didn’t originally envisage), and I know the contributors who volunteered some time view things much the same way. So yeah, take/use as much of the content as you want, or find useful. It’s just a personal opinion, but information shouldn’t be restricted – it’s why I didn’t slap copyright notices on the thing.